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  “Say yes as much as you can when you’re young so that you can balance things a little better when you’re older.” Sondra Rotty Sondra Rotty is the newly elected president and COO of...

By Ying Liu | Ownership mindset starts before equity, with the clarity, trust, and responsibility people need to lead like owners.

By Chad Coldiron | In today’s AEC market, retention isn’t just about culture – it’s about whether employees can afford to stay. 

By Rachel Gresham | Culture erodes when organizations ask people to behave one way while systems, incentives, and authority structures reward another.

By Morgan Stinson | AEC firms win when purpose, not profit, drives client experience.

By Sara Parkman | Rising Stars reveal what today’s young AEC leaders truly value in their firms.

New data highlights trends in ownership value, non-compete agreements, and leadership investment across the AEC industry.

By Daryl Simons Jr. | If your retention strategy relies on appreciation events instead of competitive pay, you are already losing talent.

By GinaRenee Autrey | AEC marketing doesn’t fail from lack of expertise – it fails when firms keep telling safe stories in increasingly noisy markets.

By Aaron Quesada | By adapting to shifting expectations, embracing innovation, and acting with integrity, firms can become indispensable partners in their clients’ growth and success.

By Stephen Parker & Mei-Ling Krabbe | The most successful organizations will treat adaptability, personalization, and inclusivity as organizing principles for workplace design.

By Stacey Weiss | In today’s AEC market, content without social distribution is invisible, no matter how smart or well written it is.

By Mark Zweig | In the AEC business, recruiting isn’t just about finding people; it’s about becoming the kind of firm people want to join.

By Ricardo Jesus Maga Rojas | In today’s AEC talent market, belonging may matter more than pay, perks, or policies in keeping young professionals.

By Duncan Robertson | Motivational leadership drives loyalty, ownership, and growth by connecting people’s individual goals to the firm’s larger purpose and vision.

By Kyle Ahern | A closer look at the structures, risks, and rewards shaping leadership in today’s AEC industry.

    “If you're going to be an entrepreneur and you're going to accomplish anything and you're going to grow your business in spite of a lot of negative things happening, you've got to be...

By Chris Catton | Having the right people on your board may be the most valuable investment you make for the future of your firm.

By Jeremy Clarke | Independent directors give AEC boards the objectivity, capacity, and perspective insiders can’t provide.

By Shirley Che | From fees to client care, lessons learned from a season of conferences highlight growth, adaptability, and connection.

By Adam White | Meaningful employee growth goes beyond trainings and workshops – it takes time, trust, feedback, and a clear path forward.

By Kyle Ahern | What high-profit 2025 Best Firms To Work For do differently to earn employee trust, loyalty, and performance.

By Sara Parkman | The top 2025 Marketing Excellence Award winners share how strategy, authenticity, and collaboration drive real AEC marketing impact.

By Sara Parkman | Zweig Group’s 2025 Rising Stars share what inspires purpose, loyalty, and change in the AEC workplace.

By Daryl Simons Jr. | How to create a stronger, more dynamic, and future-ready workplace – where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

By Kathy Nanowski | A strong employee experience leads to a stronger client experience, ensuring sustainable success and differentiation in the market.

By Liisa Andreassen | President of Neumann Monson Architects (Iowa City, IA), a firm that creates exceptional spaces for living, working, learning, and playing.

By Morgan Stinson | AEC firms that focus on fostering genuine client relationships build trust, loyalty, and long-term success.

By Brad Thurman | Consistently nurturing long-term client relationships and adding value are essential to maintaining loyalty and avoiding complacency.

By Dan Houf | Building strong, long-term client relationships is essential, but navigating transitions requires trust, adaptability, and exceptional service.

By Kyle Ahern | Firms that adopt these competitive strategies will be better positioned to achieve sustained success.

By Jeff Bornemiss | This investment enhances employee engagement and serves as a powerful tool for recruitment and retention.

By Sam Graves | Effective team management involves setting clear expectations, equipping and empowering members, and fostering engagement and evaluation.

By Kraig Kern | Shift your perspective to view your marketing team as a strategic asset that constructs the very pathways through which your business grows.

By Jeremy Clarke | Focus your firm’s retention strategy on offering meaningful benefits that are in alignment with core human needs.

By Jane Lawler Smith | Focusing on creating fans of your brand, rather than just clients, can drive deeper engagement, brand loyalty, and word-of-mouth marketing.

By Safa Kamangar | By applying these principles, a manager can become a source of inspiration, guidance, and stability for their team members.

By Morgan Stinson | Low trust in workplaces incurs a hidden cost, hindering efficiency, innovation, and collaboration.

By Lynn Bruns | Investing in the employee experience, celebrating wins, and fostering a strong culture boosts morale, retention, and organizational success.

By Brad Thurman | Define and nurture a strong company culture by articulating a concise core purpose, aligning actions with values, and embracing consistency.

By Luci Hogue | Whether you love your job and want to get to the next level or if you’re feeling unsatisfied in your current position, these tips may help gain perspective.

Zweig Group’s 2023 Best Firms To Work For Award winners share how they’re leading the charge in setting new standards for employee experience.

By Ying Liu | Organizations must proactively develop strategies to identify and retain top talent.

By Liisa Andreassen | President of Prairie Engineers, P.C. (Columbia, IL), a firm made up of engineers, surveyors, and scientists focused on solving problems for public and private clients.

By David Harvey | When well-trained staff are equipped with the skills needed to do their jobs well, everyone will reap the benefits.

By Amber Milot | Creating a recruiting culture and focusing on retention are business savvy strategies to help your organization continue to thrive in today’s job market.

By Danielle Eisenstock | Highlighting your commitment to career growth, flexible work options, and open communication will show staff your firm has an employee-first approach.

By Mike Nunley | We have a responsibility to take the lessons we learned from older generations and refine them to prepare a new generation for success.

By Liisa Andreassen | President and CEO of GRAEF (Milwaukee, WI), an international multi-discipline engineering, planning, and design firm that was founded in 1961.

By Alan Lloyd | With all the discussion about the “great resignation,” why isn’t anyone talking about the employees that aren’t jumping ship?

By Amanda Hartman, Hannah Rico & Jules Ackerson | Huge organizational milestones can be reached when you step away from your day-to-day operations to evaluate your firm’s past and plan for the future.

By Henry Liang | Mr. Miyagi was right: Balance is key. So, make sure both sides of your work-life scale are balanced.

By Brian King | Firms with a strongly integrated multigenerational workforce will experience tremendous power and opportunity for success over the next number of years.

By Kraig Kern | Too much of a good thing can lead to a crisis for you and your staff and dissatisfaction for your clients.

By Liisa Andreassen | President and CEO of PRIME AE Group (Baltimore, MD), a firm that creates vibrant communities by connecting people and conserving culture and the environment.

By Bill Fox | Knowing your clients and finding out how you can solve their problems is key to building long-lasting, profitable relationships.

By Phil Keil | Systems, value creation, simplicity, and granting authority to the most local level.

By Eduardo Smith | Strategic thinking enables us to enlarge the value and impact of our work, connecting it much more than a technical solution.

President and CEO of Payette (Boston, MA), a firm that values the close relationships it builds with its collaborators on the journey from design to reality.

By Mark Zweig | What your firm becomes should be the result of a plan, of deliberate efforts. You can and should “design” your design firm.

If we want to be in position to effectively respond and even get ahead of the curve, we all need to know what’s likely to come next.

By Christina Zweig Niehues | A good incentive compensation program needs to be carefully matched with the specific goals of your firm.

A well-designed sabbatical program can combat burnout and disengagement, ensuring your organization’s long-term success.

It can lay the foundation for a positive relationship with bosses, subordinates, and co-workers when the time comes to go the extra mile.

It’s important to understand your business model and the various outside factors that can affect the execution of an ESOP transaction.

Winning today is about serving others and providing value. Both are good. They always were, and always will be.

The World Health Organization just redefined burnout and classified it as an “Occupational Phenomenon.” So, what’s next?

Surrounding oneself with the appropriate professionals, and planning accordingly, will position your company for a successful transition to ESOP ownership.

President of CEI, a 20-year-old minority-owned engineering and contracting firm based in Miami Lakes, Florida.

If you figure out the big question, it’ll invigorate your culture, differentiate your company, and inform everything you do in your business.

President and co-founder of ADC Engineering, Inc., a multidisciplinary firm based in Hanaham, South Carolina.

Do you want to survive the next year, the next recession, and the ongoing reset of the workplace, the marketplace, and the recruiting space?

Do you want to survive the next year, the next recession, and the ongoing reset of the workplace, the marketplace, and the recruiting space?

Do you want to survive the next year, the next recession, and the ongoing reset of the workplace, the marketplace, and the recruiting space?

In terms of feedback, there’s a big difference between what millennials want and what you’ve been told they want.

A culture of employee empowerment will define innovative, leading organizations in the years to come.

President and CEO of Kleinschmidt (Best Firm #34 Multi-Discipline for 2018), a 140-person environmental consulting firm.

As firms suffer from a shortage of experienced design and construction professionals, the industry finds itself in the middle of a talent war.

Successful people will overcommit where their passion meets a purpose, where service is not a burden but a privilege.

“If any of these situations sounds familiar – and you have tried to correct the situation by directly confronting it – it may be time to let that person go.”

Strong emotional intelligence, empathy, and the ability and capacity to engage the ‘whole person’ move teams and projects forward.

“Just as it is easier (and cheaper) to keep an existing client than to get a new one, so goes it for your employees. Keeping good people is essential to your firm.”

With more competition, more intensive procurement, higher costs, and increasingly lower fees, firm leaders must leverage the power of mission. We have a mission as an organization. It is why we exist. The best ones...

“So many firms in the AEC business are making transitions right now. Aging boomers in their 60s and 70s are selling down, and their chosen successors are taking the reins.” So many firms in the...

President of Gale Associates Inc. (Best Firm #18 Multi-discipline for 2018), a 115-person consulting firm based in Weymouth, Massachusetts. By Liisa Andreassen Correspondent “Gale has been involved with a number of design-build procurements, primarily for...

If you lead an AEC firm, you have a lot of tough questions to ask yourself, and the answers aren’t always pretty. But ask and answer you must. In a romanticized view of the business...

Tribes provide compelling places for support, validation, and direction, but tribalism cannot be allowed to thwart a firm’s success. I chose psychology as a major in college because I thought it would help me understand...

Evaluate where you are, how you can improve, rank yourself and your team, and then work through every way you want to perform better. Between wrapping up business and preparing for family time most of...

President and CEO of BKF Engineers (Hot Firm #44 for 2016), a 415-person engineering firm based in Redwood City, California, with 13 offices primarily in Northern California. “It’s easy to get a job, but more...

Depending on why they left – and what they did while they were gone – it might be a good idea to welcome them back into the fold. It’s not uncommon when sorting through a...

Company culture is about much more than the fun you have, the events you sponsor, time off, and cushy health benefits. Our personal core values are developed from an early age. For me, they were...

President and CEO of EAPC Architects Engineers (Marketing Excellence #3 Website and #1 Holiday for 2017), a 140-person firm based in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Editor’s note: EAPC, founded in 1967, is celebrating its 50th...

President of WestLAND Group, Inc. (Best Firm #41 Multi-discipline and Hot Firm #45 for 2017), a full-service civil engineering and land surveying firm based in Ontario, California. By Liisa Andreassen Correspondent “It’s important to identify...

The workplace is at its best when teams are as close as tribes, but the only way to get there is to retain your talent. Retention is a growing concern, fueled by lower unemployment rates...

Working with millennials was a hot topic at the recent Hot Firm and A/E Industry Awards Conference. Most researchers define the millennial generation as those born anywhere between 1982 and 2004 (although some sources end...

A trio of profound shifts in the A/E/P industry has made it much more difficult for firm owners to retire. As I enter my mid-50s (never thought it would happen) I have become privy to...

Familiarity, loyalty, promotion, marketing investment, staff satisfaction, and corporate reputation – to achieve these things you must be consistent. Disney is the world’s most powerful brand. The Brand Finance Global 500 report also ranked Lego...

The marketing of ‘quality’ is ubiquitous in the A/E industry, but oftentimes, the difference between perception and reality can undermine a firm’s brand equity. Many firms are dealing with record high workloads. That translates into...

Now in my 36th year of this business, ‎I am still learning. Here are some quick bits of advice that have helped me over the years: Never lose your temper. Being calm is always best....

In the AEC marketing world, proposals are usually treated as business as usual, but I believe we need to make them personal. I will be celebrating my 20th wedding anniversary on June 1, 2016, (I...

Being human, we all have opportunities to learn (and re-learn) valuable truths for dealing with others. You’re never too old to learn, if you keep your mind open to it. I have found over the...

Despite what the pundits say, Mark Zweig believes that magnetic leaders aren’t such a bad thing. "Charisma” – some people have it and some don’t. It has been defined as a special charm or appeal...

Marketing is the area of your business intended for giving to others. I was on-site with a client recently and we were discussing a business development strategy for their new planning group. One of the...

Six suggestions from Mark Zweig on how to form and keep relationships alive. I never liked the idea that a consulting business should have its marketing based on personal relationships. I just don’t like being...

Portfolio: Mascot delivers the good news Internal newsletter modeled after internal mascot an award-winning success. By Christina Zweig Contributing editor ECS Carolinas, LLP (Chantilly, VA), placed first in the Internal Marketing Category of Zweig Group’s...

Mark Zweig tackles the misconceptions with four examples. I started out in business at a young age, buying and selling bicycles, then motorcycles and then cars, on my Mom and Dad’s street corner. Then I...

This article first appeared in The Zweig Letter (ISSN 1068-1310) Issue # 993 Originally published 2/4/2013 Mark Zweig exposes his, and your, weaknesses as well as resolutions to fix them. Maybe it’s introspection that comes...

I was recently interviewed for a magazine article about the residential redevelopment projects we do here in Fayetteville. In addition to figuring out why my houses sell either before we start working on them or...

You take a look at any really successful person— whether they are in the A/E/P or environmental business or some other business— and I will show you someone who knows how to build good personal...

As the new year gets ready to start, most companies in the A/E/P and environmental consulting business are gearing up to hire. Sure— most of the needs are for experienced staffers— but, since there are...

In observing firm leaders of A/E and other firms over the years, one quality stands out in the best of them. These leaders do something that endears them to all in their employ— they deflect...

I got a call from a friend and old client of mine recently. He’s down right now— and has been for months. His small design firm just isn’t doing very well, at least not compared...

Buying and absorbing another enterprise into your own is never easy. A/E/P and environmental consulting firms may be especially difficult as they have very few assets. Aside from a good (or bad) name, some computers...

No, I’m not talking about the Mel Gibson/Helen Hunt flick, although it was pretty funny. I am referring to what women working in design and environmental firms want out of their work environments. I think...

Both of my daughters are into horses. I mean they are into horses and have been for the last five years. We have three of ‘em right now. They ride every day. Then we have...

Now lie in it. I’ve been a believer in the adage that you make your own luck. But that’s not just good luck, it’s bad luck, too. Make bad decisions, do the wrong thing, and...

I just got back from a 1,720-mile motorcycle trip with my wife on our new Kawasaki ZG1000 sport touring bike. It was fantastic! We went up the coast of Maine from Kennebunkport to Bar Harbor....

With times as good as they are, particularly for architecture, engineering, and building-related environmental consulting firms, it’s hard to think about failure. But there are still firms going out of business and firms on the...

This week, you get three topics for the price of one. What makes for value? An article in the February 21 edition of The Boston Globe under the headline “Internet ad company stock gains 57%...

We just got back from the 15th Annual Inc. 500 Conference and Award Ceremony held in Philadelphia. Zweig White & Associates made it onto Inc. magazine’s list of 500 fastest-growing privately held firms for the...

You’re all aware of it. The “circular theory,” otherwise known as “what goes around comes around.” It’s one of nature’s laws that seems to hold true as much as the laws of physics. If you’re...

On Monday, December 20, 1993, William Edwards Deming, the 93-year-old management guru of Total Quality Management (TQM) died in his sleep. A statistician with a doctorate in Physics from Yale, Deming was credited with engineering...

In seven years at XYZ Engineers, Bill Jones had become one of the firm’s most dependable project managers. Bill’s jobs always made money, and his clients loved him. Unfortunately, XYZ had gone through three bad...

With more than 40,000 architecture, engineering and environmental consulting firms in the U.S., most of which have less than 20 people, no one is going to tell me that design professionals aren’t entrepreneurial. If they...